


ski is the limit

by dboymin



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Skiing, Winter fun, and a group of useless friends, near death winter sports situations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 20:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15736479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dboymin/pseuds/dboymin
Summary: bumping into a rich chinese kid turned out to be the only thing that could save jisung's beginner skiing career.





	ski is the limit

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I am fully aware it's summer right now! I just love winter and dreamies.  
> Note that I've never skied in English so the terms might be not entirely right and if I messed something up correct me in the comments please sjasjaas. Enjoy!

Jisung’s knees bent when he saw the hill under his skis. He already knew that when you were standing at the bottom everything seemed steeper and then when you were up on the mountain, it turned out to suddenly be looking okay.

But this time, it didn’t.

“Oh my dudes,” a characteristic voice, Jaemin, appeared behind him as the older joined Jisung on the verge of the hill. “Now that’s something for me.”

Jaemin had been skiing since he turned five and was undoubtedly the best at this sport of the group of friends. During their trip he was constantly reminding them that everything was boring and that he wanted to try something riskier etc etc and apparently, someone who had picked the slopes for the day, Jeno, eventually listened to him.

The aforementioned boy, Lee Jeno himself, joined them on the other side of Jisung and whistled at the view. Now they looked like a beginning of a ski school line that was waiting for the rest of the group and, yeah, you could say they actually were one.

Because Jisung couldn’t ski that much. He knew the absolute basics because one year he happened to be on a skiing camp (his mom just had to send him there…), but he was far from good… So when his older friends from the boarding house of their high school asked him if he wanted to join them on a skiing trip, he immediately refused because of the lack of skills.

Then they told him they could teach him a bit and Donghyuck, his roommate, was constantly pestering Jisung with the idea so he agreed! Yes! And now he regretted the decision so much.

Just, a glance at the hill was enough. He could die there…

Renjun and Donghyuck, the last of the group of friends, finally joined them wearing respectively all green and yellow outfits. Classy. Jaemin yelled that he was waiting for that moment and that they couldn’t stop him or something, Jisung was too scared to understand what his dumb friends were saying. Jeno gestured that he could go if he wanted so bad and in a fraction of a second the only thing left of Jaemin was a cloud of steam in the air.

All this time Jeno was actually the only one of them who was interested in helping Jisung! Jaemin was constantly showing off, Donghyuck was giving tips like ‘just go ahead bend your whole body down and don’t turn’ (which were earning him pushes from Jeno) and Renjun was pretending he didn’t see Jisung struggle, so the youngest immediately clung onto Jeno whatever situation possible.

“Hyung, are you sure I can make it alive?” he stuttered out.

Jeno smiled and then put on his goggles, showing that they’re – or he’s – ready to go. “Sure you can, just remember to traverse across the slope slowly and I’m going to be somewhere behind you. There are no deadly hills when you’re careful.”

Jisung wanted to be cheered up by that but it wasn’t working. Renjun slid to him and saw the terrifying view.

“Is it like, safe?” he asked Jeno and the fact that he, a pretty good skier, had problems with that slope made Jisung internally shiver.

“M-maybe I shouldn’t go,” he ruffled Jeno’s sleeve while looking for help in Renjun’s eyes. “It’s too steep.”

Instead he could see Jeno roll his eyes under the goggles. “Don’t chicken outttt,” he laughed at the two. “It’s going to be fun. There are a lot of beginners there too!”

Jisung honestly couldn’t see these beginners anywhere, but alright…

At first, the slope wasn’t that bad. Jisung was skiing slowly across it and Donghyuck even pointed thumbs up at him. Maybe it was just the first impression! Maybe it wasn’t deadly.

It was steep even with these precautions, he could see his skis fidgeting in the snow because of the pressure so he was trying to watch his legs because one of them always had to pop in a different direction than desired during sharper turns.

All was under control until Jeno suddenly stormed ahead completely making Jisung’s confidence plummet. Oh god, was he aiming for the teaching kid how to cycle trick? It worked only when kids didn’t realize the parent had let go! 

Jisung’s lack of concentration sent his legs apart from the straight-like line he was trying to keep and he began gaining speed. He turned his head quickly to maybe see if Donghyuck or Renjun were around but he only caught a glimpse of Renjun’s green outfit.

That was it, he thought while almost hitting other skiers. He was going to die.

Suddenly, his only brain cell left remembered that if you really wanted to stop you had to fall. So Jisung put all his weight to his right side and slowly began losing stability. He could now hear Donghyuck screaming something to him nearer and nearer so he realized he wasn’t, maybe, going to die.

Though not all was going well… Since he managed to knock someone else out too while collapsing. Jisung automatically yelled out an apology while trying to get off the body he massacred, but it worsened the situation because of the fact he still had his skis off and he just sent the two of them further down a bit.  
The other person pushed Jisung away and smoothly stood up on their skis. It was probably a guy, shorter than Jisung and surely better at unexpected landings. While Jisung was still slightly sliding across the slope with shaky legs, the other guy lowered his ski mask and shouted something at him with a surprisingly high-pitched voice and a shade of Chinese accent.

“Face the side, face the side!”

Jisung raised his eyebrows and sloppily turned his skis right so that he would be facing the side. After doing so he stopped sliding down. Oh, a nice thing to remember.

He looked up to thank the guy but to his horror both the Green and Yellow Rangers caught up and were talking, sort of, to his savior.

“He’s with you guys?” the guy asked them curiously. “You shouldn’t take a beginner to slopes like these!”

Donghyuck laughed. “Don’t worry about that,” he commented, thinking he could just say that and go. “It was an accident!”

But the skier didn’t look convinced. “Really, he’s going to either hurt himself or someone else! You three escaped ski school?”

Jisung was about to do some step by step going uphill to stop the oncoming storm. Insulting Donghyuck or Renjun… That always ended up bad.

“Listen,” Renjun slid closer to the guy. “You sound like you’re fourteen. Find your parents and mind your business and let us take care of our friend’s skiing,” he hissed out.

Jisung’s savior smiled like he already won. “I basically live here. My parents own the place-“, he began bragging but got interrupted by some other skier stopping perfectly nearby sending the soft into mist.

Jaemin, who had probably doubled or tripled their distance already, took his goggles off and assisting himself with poles he approached the group. “What’s going on?”

Donghyuck pointed at the new guy. “This person insults our ways of teaching!”

The most experienced skier of the five friends examined the scene: two of his friends looking pissed off, one stranger next to them with expensive skis on his feet and his other friend miserably standing on the snow below them with one of his skis unattached to the shoe and a scared expression on his face. And a lot of weird shapes made in the snow between all of them.

Jaemin nodded at what he was seeing with an amused expression. He looked up at the stranger and challenged him. “If he can do better… Then alright, take over.”

While Jisung still looked uncertain of where he was and why he was, the rest’s eyes widely opened.

“Really?” the stranger asked, actually surprised at the proposition.

“We-“ Renjun began, unsure, and glanced at Donghyuck for confirmation. “We can’t just give him up like that… Jisung’s our friend after all.”

“I mean, yeah, but one time or two won’t hurt,” Jaemin shrugged and then lowered his voice. “Think about the difficult slopes, guys!” he said with excitement.

That convinced them a bit and after a few seconds the only person left around Jisung was that Chinese stranger. He slid down to land next to him smoothly and waved at Jisung quickly.

“I’m Chenle and your friends let me teach you some things!” he smiled widely and it looked like big trouble in high definition.

The only thing Jisung wanted to do at the moment was to leave that slope from hell and drink hot chocolate and watch TV covered in five blankets, but he just made an unidentified noise and tried to smile too. “I’m Jisung and again I’m so so so sorry for bumping into you-“ he mumbled out.

Chenle just gestured to him to stop still smiling. “It’s okay, at least there’s some variety in my day.”

\--

“Okay so when you’re turning you’re accidentally ploughing and that makes you look bad and also messes up your speed, so focus on keeping your feet parallel while you’re turning,” Chenle was instructing him on the side of the hill, lively gesturing while doing so.

Jisung breathed out. “I know but I can’t control my feet like that,” he said in a whiny tone. He really tried and he knew what he was doing wrong but he didn’t know how to make the feet align evenly…

He looked at Chenle who was thinking for a bit. Then he slid down to get closer to Jisung.

“Hey, when you’re turning where do keep the center of mass?” he tilted his head expecting a solution to the problem.

“Uh,” Jisung began. Center of mass… “I don’t know.”

Chenle clapped his gloves, finally figuring everything out. “Great! Push your mass to the left side this turn and just slide the right foot along and it should work out!”

Jisung looked at the icy snow under him. Didn’t putting force on one side mean you’re going to fall… Well… He could try…

He pulled his body with the skiing poles and began going a bit downwards to gain some speed but still keeping the direction horizontal, just to be safe. When the time to turn came Jisung focused all his body mass on the left leg and surprisingly smoothly turned left, leaving his right leg weirdly behind. He brought it to its place by sliding it on just the surface of the snow and realized he made it, quicker and fancier than usual!

He thought it was so unbelievable that he turned his head to see the trace on the snow and a second later one of his skis was turned around on the snow and his chest was laying flat on the ice.

Jisung then felt a small wave of snow fall on his back and helmet.

“OOOOH WELL DONE!” a shriek came from above him. “It looked professional and all, you did it!”

Jisung turned his head so that he was looking at Chenle’s shoes. “Y-yeah. Did it.”

The corner of his eye caught a glimpse of a glove so Jisung helped himself with it to stand up. When he stabilized his position (poor position), he was met with the same glove patting his shoulder.

“Sooooo, now that you can turn nicely let’s go like this the whole slope, okiee?” Jisung could feel in the air a grin forming under Chenle’s ski mask. “Follow me!”

Jisung was about to tell him that it was just one time and maybe it wouldn’t work out again, but the Chinese boy was already pulling himself with poles, so Jisung sighed and joined him.

Fortunately, he somehow was able to do the turns properly more or less, Jisung honestly thought it would take him longer! Maybe, maybe it was because of the way Chenle was explaining things… No, it was definitely that! His friends wouldn’t teach him anything!

He was grateful he had bumped into him, at least he was improving, yess. And Chenle seemed nice and energetic and not even annoyed for a while with Jisung’s simple skills. Jisung now kind of felt bad for his friends… Maybe they really wanted to help but didn’t know how…

Then he remembered how Donghyuck told him to sit with three snowboarders on a four-person chairlift and, oooh, his friends really didn’t want to help for sure.

\--

“Aren’t you tired?” Chenle asked, leaning on his poles while Jisung was cleaning the boot binding from snow with one.

“Uh, a bit,” he agreed. They were skiing together for two hours and Jisung wasn’t quite used to doing so for a long time, so he had to admit that.

Though, it was so much fun that if Chenle didn’t ask he wouldn’t complain.

“Alright, so we can go sit in that place at the bottom of the hill and we can drink some hot choco,” he was wriggling his head like a child, but that was probably the power of hot chocolate.

Jisung put his boot in the ski (a minute earlier it suddenly jumped out of the binding, please…), turned to face Chenle and nodded along before realizing an important detail.

“Oh, Renjun has my wallet,” they usually brought two backpacks with them to store their belongings and this time it was Jaemin and Renjun. Right.

Chenle laughed at the remark, like for real, he burst out with laughter. Jisung felt bad suddenly… Of course he should have brought the wallet with him, that was indeed irresponsible and-

“I was already telling your friends back then! You maybe haven’t heard, but my parents own a hotel down there and so the staff in this whole area,” he drew a horizontal circle with his hand and then lowered his voice for an effect, ”knows me.”

Jisung widened his eyes. “What! A hotel?!” How could he know??

The Chinese boy nodded with satisfaction. “And this is why we’re getting hot chocolate for free.”

“Wow,” Jisung didn’t know what to say… If it was that hotel just down the hill then it was more like a resort for rich people than just a hotel… Wow. So this was why that guy felt so comfortable on these risky slopes… Wow.

“It’s nothing, nothing,” Chenle assured but the satisfaction was still hearable in his voice. “Let’s go there then, right?”

“Y-yeah. But-“

Chenle was just about to go when he looked at the bunch of trees in the middle of the hill.

“Jisung, I think you’re ready.”

The Korean boy had a puzzled expression on his face. “For hot chocolate?”

“Oh, no no no,” he turned to look at him. “Free hot chocolate only if you succeed.”

“In?”

“In a challenge,” Chenle sang.

Oh no. Jisung hated challenges.

\--

“THIS IS OFF-ROUTE!”

Jisung knew Chenle was rolling his eyes at the moment but he couldn’t tell because they were approaching a bunch of trees in the middle of the hill.

“It’s not! It doesn’t matter!”

“I can’t ski!” Jisung yelled.

“You can! Trust me, follow me!”

Jisung was about to turn as sharply as he could because there was no way he would survive skiing between some rusty trees. But then he thought that it wasn’t like Chenle wasn’t nice to him all the time, maybe it was just a very short safe shortcut… Something was telling Jisung that was not the case but he felt like he trusted Chenle enough to just follow him.

Yeah, a bad choice, he thought when he lost the ground under his skis for a while.

Then they hit the snow again but he was a changed person muttering prayers to anything possible that came to his mind because if that wasn’t literal ski jumping…

The trees quickly disappeared behind them and they were back on the proper slope, as if nothing had happened. Jisung thought it was a miracle of the miracles that his legs were alright and that he didn’t faint or something after leaving the small forest.

Instead of that he felt… power. Like if he could just ski through an unofficial area he could do anything else, like the psychical limitations didn’t exist, how did they call it?

Like sky is the limit, he remembered and looked up at the sun peeking out from the dense clouds. If Jisung wanted to be cliché he would’ve just yelled out a war cry, but he didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of Chenle who was probably eating these off-route slopes on breakfast.

All in all, they finished skiing and Chenle excitedly slid to Jisung’s poor finishing pose letting out a dolphin wheeze. “It was fun, right?? I love moguls and that one is always my favorite.”

Jisung nodded energetically. “I thought I wouldn’t make it alive,” he agreed, catching his breath.

“A great fun then!” Chenle unfastened the boots from the skis and immediately took off his helmet leaving for now his ski mask only on what made him look like a cute penguin. Jisung had some intermediate level problems with successfully unfastening his boots but in the end he made it and they were heading to that skiing café where apparently everybody knew Chenle.

In there they were talking about the day, but also their general stories – Jisung told Chenle that he attended a boarding school outside Seoul and that he danced in his free time and the Chinese boy said that he was constantly moving when he was younger because of his parents’ different business projects. A few years earlier they permanently settled in South Korea and that was how Chenle was where he was.

And that was the first day of their time skiing together, Jisung knew he wasn’t going to go back to skiing with his sneaky friends if Chenle didn’t mind spending time with him and he couldn’t wait for the next day of gaining more confidence in skiing and also spending time with his new friend.

\--

It was just that their winter break ended so quickly and in a blink of an eye they were in the boarding house again, Donghyuck unpacking his stuff onto the shelves and Jisung sadly staring at his phone.

They could hear Jaemin and his roommate yelling at each other in the room on the other side of Donghyuck’s wall, but in their room it was quiet.

“Honestly, you improved so much we just feel dumb, haha,” Donghyuck admitted bitterly while fixing the books on the shelf. “We wouldn’t be able to teach a dog how to catch a ball and there were four of us…”

Jisung laughed shortly hearing that. “Please a dog could teach you how to catch a ball better than you hyungs would, that’s the truth.”

Donghyuck looked at him and smiled apologetically. “Yeah that’s right! But you enjoyed spending time with that rich kid at least?”

“Yeah,” Jisung breathed out. “He was making skiing sound easy. And like, he had a weird laughter. Sounded like an oversized gummy duck,” he snorted at his own comparison. “It was a lot of fun.”

“So like do you have his, huh, contact information? Profile? Number?” Donghyuck suddenly began thinking. “Does he even live in Korea?”

“Yes, I mean no. I- He lives in Korea, but I didn’t really… asked him for anything…” Jisung felt it a bit more inside. He really could have asked Chenle for anything to keep in touch, but he never felt like there was a moment good enough. And when he was saying goodbye he completely forgot to ask! So dumb…

Donghyuck on the other hand had his mischief smile back in place. “His name was Chenle and he was Chinese and rich. I can find him.”

“I tried,” Jisung admitted quietly. “It’s not that easy-“

The older boy opened his laptop and began quickly typing a lot of things. Jisung shook his head and looked at his bag. Man, he should start unpacking no matter how miserable he was to go back to school reality…

“Got him.”

Jisung almost fell off the bed. “What?! I couldn’t!”

“You with your peanut brain don’t stand a chance next to this mastermind,” Donghyuck commented without a flinch and showed Jisung the private Instagram profile of Zhong Chenle.

“Oh wow. You really found him,” Jisung couldn’t believe he could keep in touch with Chenle. Even though that thought kind of scared him. There went the peacefulness of the school year.

Donghyuck looked satisfied. “You see, now you can ski nicely and have a Chinese boyfriend!”

Jisung almost choked on his saliva and his eyes grew into two moons. “But he’s not my-“

“Yeah, whatever, I said what I said.”

“Hyung!”

Donghyuck laughed at shook his head, going back to unpacking. Jisung’s finger was now hovering around the search bar of his Instagram. Yeah, he could do it. He could follow him. Yeah, he had the power.

He quickly typed the found username and followed Chenle faster than the speed of regrets. A minute later he got a follow back and a new message. Jisung breathed out. And began finding an emoticon good enough for a message back.


End file.
